Author: Lilith (aka neversaynever)
Email: fairiesbite@yahoo.com
Character/Pairing: Rachel "Marvel Girl" Grey/Kitty "Shadowcat" Pryde
Summary: Rachel and Kitty are sent to investigate a weird new mutant signature that Cerebra has detected in Northampton, MA. As it turns out, they discover a student at Smith College who sends out a crazy "lesbian vibe" that has turned the school into a sapphic free-for-all.  Anyway, obviously, wacky hijinks ensue.
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Rachel and Kitty belong to Marvel, as does anything related to "X-Men."
Notes: (Written for a multifandom hometown challenge on Livejournal.)  This story is on crack.  It's more of a Sailormoon plot, really, than an X-Men one, but it was really really fun to write.
On a minor plot point: we don't know where Rachel was born. While the X-Mansion is probably a good guess, I've decided to assume that she was born in her grandparents' house in Boston, and that she perhaps spent her early childhood years there, before attending Xavier's school when she was old enough.
Since she's recently changed her last name from "Summers" to "Grey," and is identifying more strongly than ever with her mother (who was born and raised in MA), I felt that it wasn't an unreasonable leap to make.
*****

That Girls' School Stereotype

Rachel sighed in contentment and closed her eyes, letting the breeze from the open car window stream over her face. It was a gorgeous fall day in New England, warmer than average, but not without the region's trademark autumn flair. The trees looked like they were on fire. Her hair, which matched the landscape nicely, fluttered wildly around her face. Her driving partner glanced over from the driver's seat and chuckled.

"Enjoying yourself?"

"Hey, Massachusetts is my natural habitat. Of course I like it, Kit. And it's been ages . . . literally." The redhead winked, and Kitty made a face.

"That was bad, Ray."

"I know, but I couldn't help myself." Rachel's grin broadened. "It's just that here I am driving through my home state on a gorgeous autumn day with my best friend. Then of course, there are the added perks of not being anyone's mindless slave at the moment . . . and not having to put up with Her Ladyship, Madam Frost for awhile." She rolled her eyes.

"Emma's definitely a huge pain in the ass," Kitty agreed in a disgusted tone; the woman had been picking on her ever since she'd been chosen to fill out the administrative staff at Xavier's. She tossed her head. "But, we shouldn't be talking about her. I mean, we have a chance to be away from her for awhile; let's make the most of it."

"Definitely," her companion agreed, and the two lapsed into a mutually contented silence. They certainly had been lucky to get this assignment. Both had cursed their fates when they'd discovered that they had been assigned to different teams, but after Scott This-Stick-Up-My-Ass-Just-Keeps-On-Getting-Bigger Summers (Rachel was still too angry to think of him as her father, even sort of) had made it very clear that the rosters were non-negotiable, both had despaired of spending any time together for the foreseeable future. Not very fair, considering how long they'd been parted (not to mention the fact that Kitty had believed Rachel to be dead, or at the very least thousands of years distant).

Then this assignment had come up.

After six weeks of insane busyness, the school had abruptly hit a well-nigh inexplicable lull. There had been no major catastrophes, no impending apocalypses . . . nothing, for nearly two months. Then Cerebra had picked up a rather unusual new mutant signature in a small Western Massachusetts college town. Checking it out was a fairly light assignment, so it only required two people. Rachel and Kitty were logical choices, as they were both college-age, and the school was all-women. They could blend in easily.

Of course, it also helped that one was an X.S.E. officer and the other a school administrator—they had all the bases covered.  So Storm doled out their orders, and they went.  A few days’ semi-vacation, with one small errand to do.

The relief had been intense. Aside from the pure pleasure of getting the hell out of the X-Mansion, and the fun of having one-on-one time . . . the tension between Rachel, her erstwhile alternate-universe father, and his new bitch of a bunkmate had been growing so intense that the entire campus hummed with it. Two powerful psionics at odds over a very personal matter wouldn't be a fun combination in any case, and it didn't help that Emma and Scott were the acting co-headmasters of the school.

All of that was behind them, however, at least for the moment. They were headed for a relaxed weekend wandering around Northampton, Massachusetts, basking in all the fun culture that they'd heard gravitated towards the town. Of course, they also had to find and interview somebody with a mutant signature that had thrown Cerebra for a loop, but they weren't terribly worried about that. There hadn't been anything unusual in the news, so it didn’t seem like there was going to be much danger.
*****

Rachel didn't realize that she'd dozed off until she woke up with a jerk as the car turned off the highway and onto a smaller road into town. She blinked hazily at the car dealership that they were passing. Kitty laughed at her friend's sensitivity, though she knew that such heightened awareness even during sleep was the product of periods in her friend's past when there was never any safety to rely on, never anything close to relaxation.  However, Rachel had made it clear that she was making a fresh start, so it was best not to even acknowledge the past if possible.

"Welcome to Northampton," she announced as they drove through a strip of supermarkets, gas stations, and more of the like. "Well, its outer limits, anyway. My research says it gets prettier further in." She nodded her head forward, where two tall church steeples loomed above the buildings and trees.

As promised, things improved as they passed out of the strip area and into the town proper. Northampton center was full of quirky looking independent shops and music venues, not to mention myriad and highly varied restaurants.  The people wandering around the streets were just as diverse, though there were no obvious mutants among them.

Parking, however, was an issue. They drove in circles for fifteen minutes before they finally found a lot behind the "historic Academy of Music"--an old theater--that had one or two free spots. Rachel sprang out of the car as soon as it stopped, and hurried over to pay the little yellow machine for a parking permit. When she came back to the car, Kitty had just climbed out and was stretching luxuriously. She groaned as her spine cracked.

"I am so stiff. It's so not fair that you didn't do any of the driving," she grumbled.

”Well, ‘Cat, I was kind of lost in the timestream when my license expired . . . and then I was in New York City for awhile, with buses and subways.  I’ll get it renewed eventually, but it’s kinda a hassle having to brainwash the RMV officials and fake documentation and . . . “

Kitty threw up her hands.  “I know, I know.”  Rachel made a face at her, she stuck her tongue out right back, and the two of them climbed the stone steps at the back of the lot . . . bantering all the way.

The sun was setting, and the two friends had a very pleasant time wandering through the town’s little shops and eating sushi at one of the large number of Japanese restaurants.

Taking a last sip of jasmine tea, Rachel glanced over at the little portable Cerebra unit that Sage had supplied her with.  It had zoomed in onto a map of the Smith College campus, and was showing the sought-after mutant signature’s current location as being inside the campus center.

“What d’you figure?”  She asked Kitty, who was just accepting the bill from the waiter.  “Is it too late to check it out tonight?”

Tucking a stray strand of brown hair behind her ear, Kitty glanced first at the minicomputer, then at her watch.  It was six thirty.  “Nah,” she shrugged.  “It’s Friday night, and she’s in a public place.  We can at least have a look at the situation, and decide whether it’s better to approach her now or wait for tomorrow.”

They wandered out, thanking the waitstaff as they went, and walked slowly past several more restaurants and a couple of art galleries.  There didn’t seem to be any kind of hurry.  When they reached the intersection, the light on the street they needed to cross turned red.  Kitty went to cross, since the traffic in that direction had stopped, only to be yanked back by Rachel’s hand on her arm.  “Hey!”

“Smooth, Pryde,” Rachel chuckled, gesturing towards the walk lights—still on “Don’t Walk.”  Kitty watched, mystified, as the redhead leaning on her shoulder reached over and pressed the crosswalk button.  The cars from the adjacent street were turning and going past where she had about to cross.  One lone old man wove his way through the traffic, amid honking from very annoyed drivers.

After a few minutes, all the lights in the intersection went red, and all of the walk lights on all four corners turned white.  An alarm that sounded like a cuckoo-clock went off, and Rachel grabbed Kitty’s hand and dragged her diagonally across the street to the far corner.  “What on earth are you doing?!”

 

“Crossing the street, dork!”  They reached the sidewalk without being hit by any cars, which Kitty would have normally considered a miracle.  However, all of the traffic had stopped at once, and many other people were crossing corner-to-corner just as they were.  “Weird,” she muttered.

“Silly girl, don’t you know what that’s called?  ‘Crossing kitty-corners.’  I’d have thought it’d come naturally to you.”

Kitty groaned.  “Still with the bad jokes?  Even the crossing lights are calling you crazy.  Cuckoo!  Cuckoo!”  She poked the side of Rachel’s head with the finger of her free hand.  The other just laughed.  They walked down the street, holding hands and matching easy stride for stride.

A couple of older women walked by, both with short, graying hair.  They too were holding hands, and smiled indulgently at the two X-Men as they passed.  Kitty blinked after them.  Surely they didn’t know them from somewhere?  Rachel smiled and said nothing.

Eventually, after crossing a few more streets (the normal way this time), passing a large red church, and climbing a hill, they were obviously entering the campus.  Two large conjoined red brick dorms loomed behind them as they waited at yet another stoplight.  As they were crossing, they passed a couple of college boys in Amherst College Lacrosse sweatshirts, who were muttering darkly to each other.

“I’ve heard the damn jokes, of course, but I never thought it was like THAT . . . and they weren’t even going to let us watch.”

 

“I’ll bet they have some REAL girls at Mt. Holyoke.  C’mon, I heard that Ben’s little sister’s dorm is having a big party.”

“Huh.”  Rachel glanced over her shoulder at the receding backs of the two men.  “I’ve heard things about this school too, and the town, but I wonder . . . ”

“Huh?”  Kitty blinked at her.  Rachel tried hard not to laugh.  The other girl was very mature in most ways—while she’d been lost in the timestream, Kitty had dated a much older man, briefly joined a military group, and had become quite the pro-mutant activist at the University of Chicago, among other things—but for some reason she seemed to have a blind spot.  She decided not to enlighten her friend, looking forward to the moment when it would finally hit her.

They turned a corner and a huge white modern-style building loomed up in front of them.  “Not terribly pretty, is it?”  Kitty remarked, and Rachel nodded, then shrugged.  Walking nonchalantly, as though the building wasn’t a strange place, they pushed open the heavy glass doors and entered the student center.

Inside the building was structured in enormous sweeping curves, and the floor was cold cement.  Several computers lined one wall, next to a bulletin board advertising everything from yoga classes to finance workshops.  Across the floor, alongside a white metal rail that guarded passerby from falling down to the bottom floor, were a number of slightly lurid multicolored little tables with plastic chairs in orange, yellow, and green.  Phoenix colors, Rachel thought absently.

However, the two girls were almost immediately distracted from the décor by the behavior of the students all around them.  There were girls everywhere, girls of every description.  They all had one thing in common, however: they were all over each other.

At the first table they passed, a very tall and leggy blond girl in a basketball shirt was holding hands with a blushing, bespectacled girl in a headscarf.  Right next to them, a black girl with a buzzed head was perched right on a tabletop, smirking at a perky chick with crazy, spiked hair dyed blue and green, and many piercings.  Still further along, two others had shoved the table out into the middle of the floor and were snuggling and necking gently, while a pigtailed girl with orange-lensed glasses was climbing into the lap of a frizzy-haired, freckled redhead in a rayon skirt right beside them.  And so it went.  Other girls were milling around further down in front of the security desk, holding hands and waists.  One was leaning over the desk to tug the collar of the girl behind it.  Absently squeezing each others’ hand, Rachel and Kitty stared around them in shocked silence.

Finally, Kitty leaned over and murmured into her partner’s ear, “this is like some kind of crazy porno stereotype.  This can’t be real.  Not all girls who go to women’s colleges are . . .”  She gestured around.

Rachel nodded, her expression somewhat wry.  “You think maybe we’ve found our mutant—or at least her power?”

Kitty nodded.  “I guess that’s why she showed up so prominently to Cerebra.  This is obviously a far-reaching power.  But which one is she?”  As they’d been talking, they’d walked to the other side of the building.  Through the outer doors, they could see that still more of the surreal sapphic festivities were taking place on the steps.

Rachel had been searching the minds around them with her telepathy, trying to pinpoint the source of the haze.  “Their minds are clouded—it’s like they’re intoxicated.  Oh hey, look, Kit.  That one’s checking you out.”  She nodded her head in the direction of a rather buff-looking girl with muscles that were almost on their way to She-Hulk proportions, whose hair was mostly hidden under a Red Sox cap.  Her t-shirt was riding up, exposing impressive washboard abs.  She saw the two of them looking her way and winked suavely.

Kitty blushed and looked away.  “Any luck, Ray”

Rachel had been scanning the minds around them, trying to pinpoint the source of all the haze.  “It’s like they’re really stoned.  Hmm.  And it gets even stronger over here . . .”  She indicated the cafeteria area.  Kitty blinked.  Both of them simultaneously noticed what some of the girls in the corner booths were doing, and then very quickly looked away.  Even Rachel was rather red.

Suddenly, she nodded.  “It’s her,” she said definitely, pointing to a girl of about eighteen, with blue streaks in her dark hair.  She stood behind the counter of the coffee bar, and was handing a milkshake to a girl in a “Over One Hundred Years of Women On Top” t-shirt.  Her name tag read “Ruby.”

The duo headed over in her direction.  Kitty shook her head to clear it; she was feeling kind of woozy all of a sudden.

Ruby looked up at them curiously, ready to take their order.  The other girl had wandered away in the direction of the booths.  “Hi, there,” Rachel said with a cocky half-grin.  “We’d like to talk to you for a minute, if you don’t mind.”

 

“Me?”  Ruby blinked at them.

Kitty nodded.  “You know that you’re the one who’s causing . . . well . . . all this, don’t you?”  She asked somewhat more bluntly than she’d meant to, motioning too the bizarre scene that was going on all around them

“What do you mean?”  Ruby looked utterly confused.  “It’s a Friday night, everyone’s relaxing . . . “

“They’re doing a little more than relaxing,” Rachel remarked wryly, rubbing her temple absently.

Ruby shrugged.  “Well, but this is SMITH.  Everyone knows it’s like, the dyke school.  Everyone back home told me it was going to be like this, and they were right.  And . . . what’s wrong with it?”  She glared at them.  Her eyes were an odd shade, sort of an extra-reddish brown.  They glinted.

Kitty was having trouble concentrating on the conversation.  She was distracted by the texture of Rachel’s hand in hers.  The fingers on her friend’s hand were long and slender, but callused with all the mechanical work that she did on the X-Men’s vehicles.  They were strong hands, capable hands . . . warm . . . she blinked and tried to bring her mind back to the task at hand.  “What’s wrong is that these girls aren’t all necessarily . . . like this.  You’re forcing it on them.  Not on purpose, I’m sure, but . . . it’s not fair to them.  We’re here to help you control it, control . . .”  She lost her train of thought.

“Control what, exactly?!  Where are you FROM, anyway?”

There was a blink, and suddenly they were both in costume.  Ruby gaped at their skin-tight spandex as Rachel flashed her X.S.E. badge in the girl’s face.  “Marvel Girl, agent of X.S.E. . . . and Shadowcat.  We’re from the Xavier Institute For Higher Learning.”  As she spoke, her thumb began to stroke Kitty’s palm, ever so gently; hardly noticeable through their gloves.

“You’re X-Men?!”  The girl’s eyes widened.  “What are you trying to tell me, that I’m a . . . a mutant?  You can’t be right.  Everyone knows that Northampton is Lesbianville, USA, and Smith is—“

“Hee, she matches the tables!”  A passing girl commented, pointing at Rachel.  Kitty snickered, coming back to herself for a second: the retro color scheme was kind of similar.  Rachel glared at her, and in retaliation, ran her hand up the inside of Kitty’s arm, lightly.  She bit back a gasp, her eyes fluttering half-shut.

“Anyway, what I was saying WAS.”  Rachel said importantly.  “You ARE a mutant, and you are causing this.  There might be some lesbians at this school, but this is just impossible.  We’re here to help you learn how to control this power of yours, for your own good and for others’ too . . . “ She trailed off.  Kitty’s hand, now free from her own grasp, was resting slightly below and to the left of the small of her back.

“Oh no . . . “ she breathed, looking over at her partner, whose eyes looked slightly glazed.  Rachel noticed that she had pulled her hair out of her ponytail, so that it fell in shining chestnut waves over the navy shoulders of her costume.  Kitty’s lips were parted just slightly, and Rachel had never noticed how full they were, how perfect.

For her part, Kitty had completely forgotten that Ruby was there.  She was too busy reaching up to remove Rachel’s weird yellow glasses in order to get a better look at her clear green eyes.  Her hair shone almost crimson in the fluorescent lighting, and the hideous yellow-and-green top of her costume hugged her considerable curves—curves that a younger Kitty had been so jealous of—in a way that only spandex can.

“Kitty—we can’t—we’re being affected—“  Rachel trailed off as Kitty dropped the glasses with a clatter, bringing her yellow-gloved hand up to cup the side of her friend’s face.  Rachel closed her eyes with a sigh, and then she felt the warm brush of Kitty’s lips against her own.

Ruby took this opportunity to open the gate in the coffee bar counter and sprint out of the campus center.  The two X-Men didn’t even notice, as Rachel’s hands came up suddenly to grip the sides of Kitty’s head, and her tongue slipped in between the lips she’d just been admiring, tasting.  Kitty’s hand ran down her back to run itself along the hem of Rachel’s almost indecently short green miniskirt.

A few seconds later, they broke apart suddenly and stared at each other in total shock.

*****

The majority of the activities in the campus center continued unabated, as the still-costumed Shadowcat and Marvel Girl stumbled mostly unnoticed out onto the green lawn on the campus side of the building . . . despite the fact that the former had phased them right out through the wall.  Rachel vaguely supposed that the students’ long-term exposure to Ruby’s power must be having longer-term effects.

She glanced over at her partner.  Kitty was gripping her sides tightly with both hands, and her face was almost as red as Rachel’s hair.  Rachel reached out to soothe her, but then pulled her hand back.  “Kitty, I . . .”

“It WAS like being drunk, wasn’t it?  Like being drunk, only . . . gay.  That’s what it was.”

“It was kind of like being drunk, yeah,” Rachel agreed hesitantly.  “But . . .”

“I’m sorry, Ray!  I’m sorry, of course I didn’t . . . I wouldn’t . . . we’re friends,” Kitty trailed off lamely, staring intently at the mini-Cerebra screen as she tracked Ruby across the campus in the direction of one of the dorms.

Rachel was silent.  Kitty glanced up at her quickly, and her friend sighed.  “Kitty, we’ve always been close . . . I’ve always felt closer to you than to anyone else in this timestream.  You’re the only one I’ve ever trusted to fully share my past memories, the one who saved me from Mojo and Elias Bogan . . . you’re my best friend, yes, but.  Um.”  She looked away.  Kitty’s eyes widened to see her friend, who had been so boisterous the past few months, looking so tentative.

“You mean you . . . ?  I didn’t know you were . . . I mean, Rachel, the men are ALWAYS after you.  And what about Franklin?”

 

“Yeah, I loved Franklin,” Rachel replied softly.  “But, I loved Kate, too.”

“Kate?”  Kitty squeaked.  “Me?”  Rachel nodded, saying nothing.

It could have been the residual effects of Ruby’s power, but Kitty very much wanted to put her arms around the girl who suddenly looked so vulnerable.  The look was familiar: she’d seen it many times before when Rachel was reflecting on the past, caught it briefly before the loud-mouthed, cocky cover-up that she’d adopted could reassert itself.  Rachel had been hurt so badly inside, though it was easy to forget sometimes, the way that she behaved.  Kitty didn’t want to be another thing that hurt her.  She hated seeing Rachel hurt, and always wanted to comfort her.  She . . .

Come to think of it, she and Rachel had been awfully close for awhile now.  Snuggling, holding hands.  The touching hadn’t been a new thing, brought on by Ruby: Ruby had just made it much more raw, her power stripping away Kitty’s perceptions of everything ELSE until all that was left was the way she felt for Rachel.

Scared as all hell, but much more clear-headed in the cool night air, Kitty carefully reached out one hand and slipped it into Rachel’s, which closed around it in a tight squeeze.  She gave an audible sigh of relief at the sensation, as though the previous separation had been causing a strain on her that she had somehow failed to notice.

First hand-in-hand, then arm-in-arm, the two of them marched across the campus to find Ruby’s dorm.

*****

The next morning, the two of them stood on a red Japanese-style bridge that spanned a small stream that trickled down from the pond in the center of the campus.  Wind whipped their hair back from their faces and tore colorful leaves from the trees around them.  Rachel took off the strange red computerized sunglasses that she’d been wearing and made a face at them before tucking them securely into the pocket of her cargos.  “Sage says they’ve already got some kind of damper constructed for her.  She can come back to the school with us, get it fitted, and be back in time for class on Monday.”

 

Kitty stared.  “You mean they KNEW what her power was?!”

“If they didn’t know, they certainly had strong suspicions.”  Rachel rolled her eyes.  “I could hear Storm laughing in the background.”

 

“They set us up.”  It wasn’t a question, but a statement.  Kitty crossed her arms over her chest in obvious annoyance and glared at the sparkling stream underneath them as though it had somehow personally offended her.

Rachel’s hands came to rest softly on her shoulders.  “Do you wish that they hadn’t?”  She murmured, close by Kitty’s ear.  The girl smiled, and one of her hands came up to cover one of Rachel’s.

“Of course not, Ray, but it might have been nice not to be manipulated . . . I would have figured it out eventually.”

“Oh really?”  Rachel teased, wrapping her arms around her partner’s waist.  Kitty leaned back carefully—things were still somewhat tenuous, after all; there was so much yet to be said.  “You didn’t know why those women were smirking at us downtown yesterday, did you?”

“No, it was kind of str—oh.”  Kitty laughed, tilting her head back, arching in Rachel’s arms.  “I guess I am pretty oblivious.”

“I’ll say.”

They stood there for a quiet moment, before Kitty closed her eyes and wondered, “what happens to all the girls here at this school, though?  Most of them are probably straight, but they’re still acting really . . . yeah.  Will it wear off?  Won’t they freak out?”  She grimaced.  “What fabulous PR that would be: mutants are dangerous, unnatural, and now they MAKE YOU GAY.”

“Kind of like what they say about gay people already?  But anyway, it should wear off.  Gradually.  Most of them will probably write it off as experimentation, I’m sure . . . or they’ll blank it out.  Some of them will be very pleased to continue, of course.”  There was a smile in her voice.

Kitty turned in Rachel’s arms and touched the tip of her nose with her fingertips, lightly.  “Like me.”

”You’re really sure?  I mean, I know this has been sudden, and you were kind of intoxicated for part of it.”  Rachel’s eyes were concerned.

“Yes, Ray, I am sure,” Kitty replied firmly.  She laughed lightly.  “Who’d have thought?  All that time I thought I was jealous of you for being so popular with all the men, when really I was jealous of the men because they could feel free to act like that around you . . .”

”Well, you get what none of them ever did,” Rachel replied seriously.  “I love you, Katherine Pryde.  I always have.”

They kissed, then.  Softly.  When they broke it, Kitty’s eyes sparkled mischievously.  “Well, aren’t I lucky, then.  I have the world’s most Marvelous girlfriend!”

Rachel rolled her eyes and smiled.  Then the two of them turned to walk across the campus and down into town one more time.  They’d heard there was some funky little gay gift shop that they’d somehow missed on their walk the previous evening.  It seemed only fitting that they get something for their “benefactors” back at the mansion, after all.